


One Night

by LiveLoveLaugh



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, One Night Stand, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2267070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLoveLaugh/pseuds/LiveLoveLaugh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just one night. One night of fire and heat and passion shared between a disillusioned soldier/guard and his “prisoner” a.k.a. the best damn Commander the System’s Alliance has ever seen. They knew they shouldn’t have done it. They knew if they were caught the consequences would be extreme, but for that one night James and Carmen Shepard didn’t give a damn. It all started with a kiss. Just an innocent accidental kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Night

They had been dancing around each other for months. James had had a fanboy crush on Shepard for years. He followed her career closely and had constructed this image of what he thought she’d be. She destroyed his illusions within minutes of meeting her and it made him fall fast for her. She wasn’t the hardass, professional, by-the-book soldier the thought she’d be. Instead he saw she was a funny, caring, compassionate, clumsy as hell, hot-tempered, and very short woman. She was always pulling pranks on James and the other two guards and he always returned the favor. Sometimes during his shift, she’d tell him stories about her time on the Normandy or with Cerberus. It was obvious Shepard viewed her crew as her family and cared deeply for them all.

She had a bad habit of letting her temper flare during meetings with the Defense Committee and always left their chambers in a bad mood. James was the only one who could calm her down. They’d spend the evening watching Blasto movies or 20th and 21st century action movies ( _Demolition Man_ was her favorite). What really made him fall for her though was the little things. The way she always bit her bottom lip when she was thinking hard about something, the cocky little smirk she gave whenever he fell for one of her pranks, and the way she always seemed to brush an arm, leg, or hand against him.

Shepard was attracted to him the moment she laid eyes on him. Shirt slightly torn, a trickle of blood running down his face, and a bold black tattoo peeking out from under his shirt. She knew the tall (so very tall) and muscular soldier would be trouble. She thought she could handle it. She thought that, at most, he’d feature in her more steamy dreams and that would be it. Life never seemed to work out the way she planned it though. She learned early on that he was somewhat of a fan of hers. She was happy to destroy those illusions as quickly as possible. She never liked the way the media and the Alliance portrayed her. She was human and a soldier; nothing more, nothing less. She wanted to show Vega that she was just another soldier, and so she did.

What she didn’t plan on was Vega returning the favor. From the look of him, you’d expect the six-foot-one, heavily muscled, overly flirtatious soldier to be just another jarhead. You’d be very wrong. What surprised her most was just how smart he was. She wasn’t expecting him to be a complete idiot, but she wasn’t expecting his near genius level of knowledge when it came to weapons. He didn’t know tech, but he _did_ know his weapons and mods. He even taught her a few things and showed her some of the mods he thought up himself. The pride in his eyes when he showed off his work made her heart swell. The way he talked about his family, his abuela and tío Emilio especially, made her long for family. She was raised on an Earth orphanage and later the streets so she never had a _real_ family of her own. For those brief moments when he spoke, she could feel the love he had for them. What really made her smile was the way he’d lapse into Spanish to say how he really felt. He thought she couldn’t understand him and she couldn’t blame him for that. Very few people knew her first language was Spanish and she could speak many more. The day she let him know she could understand him was the day that changed everything.

They were watching some crappy Blasto spin-off after another disastrous meeting with the Committee. They had already taken her ship, her rank, and her crew, so she couldn’t understand why they still had her meet with them. After six months of being locked up, the frustration and stress became too much and she really let loose at the meeting. She called each of the Committee members some very colorful names and James had to half-carry, half-drag her out of the room and escort her back to her makeshift cell. Once he got her back, he put on the first shitty action movie he could find and then proceeded to make fajitas for them both. Anderson showed up once to formally reprimand her (the smirk on his face took the heat out of his words), but other than that they were left alone.

They were halfway through the crappy spin-off when Shepard laid her head on James’s shoulder. For a moment, everything felt so wonderfully normal. Shepard closed her eyes and imagined that she and James were there, on that couch, for completely different reasons. Maybe she had come over to his house for a date, a simple dinner and a movie. They were just two regular people; no ranks, no trial, no Alliance.

“Shepard?” James’s voice broke her out of her wonderful daydream. She looked up and saw him looking down at her. It was like they saw each other for the first time. In that moment, they knew they couldn’t dance around each other anymore. James reached down and kissed her. I was a sweet, almost chaste kiss and any other time it might have stopped there. Tonight though, it was more than enough to open the floodgates. The kisses deepened and they lost themselves in the feel of each other. James pulled her onto his lap, her legs straddling his hips, and buried a hand in her hair. The kinky coils of hair felt just as soft as he’d imagined. Shepard ran her hands across his chest, reveling in the feel of the hard planes of muscle After a while, they finally broke apart, staring at each other breathless.

“We shouldn’t do this.”

“I know.”

“If we get caught--”

“I know,” Shepard said, cutting James off. “I know, but I don’t give a damn. They’ve already taken everything from me. They can’t hurt me anymore than they already have. If you don’t want this, just let me know and I’ll--”

James cut her off with a kiss. “I want this. I want you.”

Shepard slowly extracted herself from James’s arms and stood. She took his hand and gently prompted him to stand. He was always amazed at how small she was; she barely stood five feet five inches tall. The recruitment ads and interviews always made seem taller than she was. It was hard for him to believe at first that such a tiny person was the best damn Commander the Alliance had and one of their most powerful biotics.

Shepard looked up at him, smiled, and began to slowly walk backwards toward her room, removing her shirt along the way. It didn’t take long for James to follow, making a trail of his own clothing from the couch to the bed. They lost themselves in each other that night. Every touch, kiss, and caress conveying more meaning than words ever could. They poured everything they had in that one night. If they were only going to get one night, they wanted to be sure there were no questions about how they felt.

After it was all said and done, they laid together on the bed in a comfortable silence. Shepard laid her head on his chest, tracing the lines of his tattoos while James ran his fingers through her hair.

“Te quiero, Carmen.” James could feel the smirk on her face and the soft kiss she planted on his chest. After a few seconds of silence, James tilted her head up to look her in the eye. “Aren’t you gonna ask me what that means?”

“No.” Shepard said with a small laugh. She smiled at the look of confusion on James’s face. “Te quiero también, James.”

She laughed outright at the stunned look he gave her after she replied to him in perfectly enunciated Spanish. “Wait, you mean this whole time you understood me?”

“Yep!” Shepard said with her signature smirk. “I’m surprised you knew my first name but you didn’t know Spanish was my first language.”

“I must have missed that in your file.” James tried hard to look angry with her but her smile was contagious. Tomorrow, everything would have to go back to “normal.” For right now though, they were just two people. There were no ranks, no trial, and definitely no Alliance. They were just two people falling in love.


End file.
